Robert Frazier (poet)
Robert Alexander Frazier (born 1951) is an American poet and writer of science fiction, as well as an impressionist painter. Life Family, youth, education Frazier was born in Ayer Massachusetts. His mother, Barbara Brown Frazier, was an oil painter, who had been educated in portraiture by Emil Gruppe and Dimitri Romanovsky. His father, Stuart Wilson Frazier, was a civilian teacher of cryptoanalysis (code breaking) - for U.S. Army security at Fort Devens, a post he obtained after serving in the Army with a small contingent of Americans during World War II at Bletchley Park, the famous codebreaking center in England. Robert Frazier was educated at the University of Iowa, where, as an undergraduate (somehow, after being misplaced in a 1st course) he was lucky to take graduate courses in poetry at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Marriage and career In the mid-1970s, he moved to Nantucket Island (his distant relatives were among the early settlers there), where an arts colony existed. He married Karol Marie Lindquist, a nationally recognized maker of the Nantucket Lightship Basket, in 1978. He and his wife have a daughter, born in 1973, Timalyne (also a graduate of Clarion and an SF writer), and 2 granddaughters, Phoebe and Chloe. He attended the Clarion Workshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1980 (and returned there as the assistant in 1981). He also began a career in oil painting then, which, after a 10-year hiatus to try working as a fiction writer (from 1988 to 1998), he resumed in 1998. In 1984, Frazier edited the landmark anthology of SF poetry Burning With A Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic (Owlswick Press). He also edited and published one of the early magazines of SF poetry, The Speculative Poetry Review (later titled TASP). His first SF story, "Across Those Endless Skies", appeared in In the Field of Fire (1987). He is a founding member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and a past editor of their newsletter, Star*Line. As a historian, Frazier has written several articles on the evolution of the SF poetry movement, the most recent being a 2005 primer on the Rhysling Awards for the poetry anthology, The Alchemy of Stars, the Rhysling Award winners Showcase. WorldCat entry for the award anthology The Science Fiction Poetry Association named Frazier a Grand Master] in 2005.http://www.sfpoetry.com/grandmaster05.html He freelances as a graphic designer as well, for a time designing books for SF publisher Mark V. Ziesing and was art director for Nantucket Magazine from 1995 - 2005. He was president of the Artists Association of Nantucket from 1999–2004, and now works as their gallery director. In 2008, he had his 7th consecutive solo exhibition of oil paintings at the Old Spouter Gallery on Nantucket Island. In 2007, his article on painter Frank Swift Chase has been published in vol. 56, no. 3, of Historic Nantucket, a publication of the Nantucket Historical Association. Recognition He has won the Rhysling Award three times: for Best Long Poem in 1994, and for Best Short Poem in 1980 and 1989. His "Robot Origami", from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (March 2005) was nominated for the 2006 Rhysling Award, and his "When Will Time Unfold", from the Magazine of Speculative Poetry (Spring 2006), for the 2007 Rhysling Award. His collaborative poem with Bruce Boston, "Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest", received first place in the 2006 Locus magazine Online Poetry Poll for "Best All-Time Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror Poem".2006 Poetry Poll Results, Locus Online. Web, Feb. 18, 2013. Publications Poetry *''Peregrine'' (chapbook). Dennis, MA: Salt-Works Press, 1978. * A Measure of Calm: A poem (with Andrew Joron; chapbook). Mountain View, CA: Ocean View Press, 1985. *''Perception Barriers'' (chapbook). Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Poets Workshop and Press, 1987. *''Co-Orbital Moons'' (chapbook). Mountain View, CA: Ocean View Books, 1988. *''Chronicles of the Mutant Rain Forest'' (with Bruce Boston; chapbook). New York: Horror's Head Press, 1992. * Invisible Machines (with Andrew Joron; chapbook). La Grande, OR: Jazz Police Books, 1993. *''The Daily Chernobyl, and other poems''. San Francisco, CA: Anamnesis Press, 2000. *''Phantom Navigation''. Dark Regions Press, 2012. Fiction *''Nantucket Slayrides: Three short novels'' (with Lucius Shepard). Nantucket, MA: Eel Grass Press, 1989. *''Family Secrets''. Nantucket, MA: Eel Grass Press, 1993.Robert Frazier (writer), Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation. Web, Mar. 15, 2013. Non-fiction *''The Art Colony on Nantucket: Sixty years of contemporary art'' (with George Thomas). AAN Press, 2005. *''Exiled on Main Street''. AAN Press, 2011. *''The Waterfront Artists: Painters who changed Nantucket''. AAN Press, 2012. Edited *''The Rhysling Anthology: Best science fiction poetry of 1982''. Schenectady, NY: Science Fiction Poetry Association, 1983. *''Burning with a Vision: Poetry of science and the fantastic'' Philadelphia, PA: Owlswick Press, 1984. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.Frazier, Robert, Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, SFE Ltd. Web, Mar. 15, 2013. See also *List of U.S. poets References External links ;Books * ;About *Robet Frazier at the Science Fiction Poetry Association *Frazier, Robert at the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Category:1951 births Category:Living people Category:American poets Category:American science fiction writers Category:People from Middlesex County, Massachusetts Category:People from Nantucket, Massachusetts Category:20th-century poets Category:21st-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets